


seedlings

by cygnes



Series: short fic belatedly posted from tumblr [3]
Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Romantic Hauntings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22947295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: Mary is dead. Laszlo briefly entertains doubts as to whether she'sgone.
Relationships: Laszlo Kreizler/Mary Palmer
Series: short fic belatedly posted from tumblr [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648723
Kudos: 9





	seedlings

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here on tumblr.](https://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/171864132075/laszlo-does-not-hire-another-housekeeper-that)

Laszlo does not hire another housekeeper.

That isn’t to say that his household does not _need_ a housekeeper. But a man of his means may dine out often, alone or in the company of friends and colleagues. He may have a laundress in once a week to do the clothes and linens, or a charwoman to keep the accumulating dust from getting thick enough to see fingerprints in it. There are ways around confronting the problem.

He knows, of course, that what he is doing is avoidance. That he is incurring expense and unnecessary difficulty because he is unprepared to face the full weight of his grief. Still, he cannot imagine going in and getting rid of Mary’s things. Who would he send them to? Who did she have, besides the other residents of the strange little world he had built? The best thing to do would be to give them to charity, or to some woman in need. There are always women in need – not among his own personal acquaintance, but perhaps the mother of one of his students, or an employee of a friend. Mary might even approve of this course of action.

The thought of some stranger – or worse, some stranger’s child – wrapped in a quilt that Mary had stitched is unaccountably abhorrent to him. (Not that he had ever thought of himself as a father. His students, and Stevie, are as close to paternal as he will ever get. He is comfortable with that distance.)

Once Cyrus is recovered from this latest injury, Mary’s room will be shut up until Laszlo comes to his senses. In time, he will. But the matter of the book is not helping.

Mary had been reading _Rose in Bloom_. One of Alcott’s, one that she had read before. A gentle sort of romance with some of that author’s customary moral instruction. One tragic death and three happy couples: a better ratio than that offered by real life. There is no reason that the book should have been moved from where it sat on top of her chest of drawers. He finds it in the sitting room and puts it back in its old accustomed place. It will sit there until he gathers the courage enough to give it away.

Or it _should_ sit there. He finds it out of place again, this time upstairs. The ribbon marking her page has moved, and the pressed flower she kept inside is missing.

No, not missing after all. He finds it folded into one of his handkerchiefs and nearly crushes it without realizing. If it had only been the bookmark, he could think this was an innocent mistake. That Cyrus, or even Stevie, had taken to reading the book in order to soothe their own grief and feel closer to Mary. But he can’t understand the flower unless he’s willing to suspend his disbelief to an unheard-of degree.


End file.
